Previously it was thought that diet drinks, diet pop, diet juices were good for weight loss and did not cause weight gain. We now know that this is untrue and that diet drinks actually still cause weight gain. Multiple studies have now confirmed this. Previously, there hadn't been convincing proof.

Researchers from the University of Texas Health Science Center (UTHSC) at San Antonio, did a longitudinal study and looked at ten years of data and found that people who drank at least 2 diet pops a day had a waist circumference 6 times greater than those who didn't. In essence, consuming diet drinks increases your waist size by 70%.

Research has also shown that diet drinks and artificial sweeteners still cause the same spike in insulin levels and causes you to gain weight from all of the other calories you are eating. People who drink diet drinks are likely to consume 194 more calories per day than a person that doesn't drink diet drinks. That translates into about 1 pound weight gain per month.

Another study of 60,000 showed that those who consume diet drinks daily gained weight and were more likely to be obese, because they consumed more calories total. Liquid calories and artificial sweeteners do not activate the satiety hormones, and actually cause you to eat more. People who drink diet drinks consume more of other types of calories. And while the artificial sweeteners themselves did not contain any calories, they lead to the same insulin response and caused fat storage from the other calories that were consumed.

Diet drinks have also been associated with higher stroke, heart attack, and diabetes rates. Which we'd like to avoid at all costs!

Diet drinks don't trigger that satiety hormones, and you always end up consuming more and never feeling full.

That's in addition to all the chemicals and unknown substances in diet drinks.

Read about liquid calories in the next section to find out why liquid calories cause weight gain, compared to their solid counterparts.